I am currently doing a rotation project on interoception and its implications for empathy, as part of my PhD within LIDo BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership, supervised by Dr Jenny Murphy. We aim to understand the link between interoception and empathy by using both self-reported and objective measures of interoception and empathy. In addition, we are also conducting a study to understand if a specific brain activity that is assocaited to heartbeats and used as an interoception marker really reflects detection of heartbeats, or simply represents between-subjects differences in physiological parameters.

Among primates' reactions to death, mothers carrying the corpses of their dead infant is the most commonly observed one. However, there is not a clear explanation of why they carry out this behaviour, especially considering that it is costly and provides no benefit for them. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain it but none has been tested. Some of them relate to the mother-infant bond and others are associated with the climatic conditions or with cognitive factors. With our project we, Alecia Carter and I, aim to create a database of cases of mother carrying the corpse of their dead infant reported in the scientific literature, recording different associated and relevant factors. With this database we will carry out phylogenetic regressions to try to identify which factors influence this behaviour, as well as the observed between- and within-species variation in its duration. This will allow us to test some of the aforementioned hypotheses and to give a comprehensive explanation to this phenomenon, based on the current available data. The results will be discussed within the framework of the emerging field of evolutionary thanatology.

Software that will be used: R.

Through Social Network Analysis (SNA), together with Belén López (Universidad de Oviedo) and Miquel Llorente (Universitat de Girona), I studied the structure and dynamics of two groups of captive chimpanzees at MONA Foundation (Girona, Spain). The results showed interesting aspects about how the chimpanzees where recovering from very traumatic situations and huge social deprivation thanks to the rehabilitation and resocialization processes. Remarkably, grooming networks showed very strong and abundant interactions between individuals, indicating a high level of social cohesion in both groups.

Software used: ZOOMONITOR (data collection), UCINET (SNA), SPSS (statistical analyses) and Gephi (sociograms).